A Little Rebellion Every Now & Then

We are, in theory, set for a summer ‘history intensive.’ We’re reviewing Chapters One and Two in Story of the World: Volume Two, and we’re going to ‘do’ Chapter Three tonight as well. In an ideal world, we’ll do at least one chapter a day, sometimes two, depending on how important I deem the material. The goal is to finish the book with some of July remaining. We’ll take, then, the rest of July and all of August free from history, and be ready to start, on schedule, Story of the World: Volume Three when we start third grade work at the beginning of September. I’m so very excited about this coming year of history - 1600 to 1850 includes so many fabulous things, and there are so many fabulous books to which I just can’t wait to introduce her.

I feel a little bit strange about how we’re conducting this middle ages and renaissance time period, but I know we’ll read some books in that “free” July and August time, not to mention the rest of the year, and she’ll cover the same time period again at least twice before she graduates high school. How many people can honestly say that about their own educational experience? I say ‘at least’ twice because our own plans would have her covering it around sixth grade and around tenth grade, but assuming we continue with Master’s Academy, they will do medieval times during her fourth grade her as well.

The status of other subjects for the summer? We’re doing math only to bring her math facts memorization level up to the same level as her understanding. I’m fairly confident that with that done, her math level with skyrocket even more next year. We’re done with grammar until the fall, over halfway through Growing With Grammar Grade 3. We’ll do spelling at least once a week, hopefully more often, since it’s a weak area for her, and hopefully around the beginning of July, we’ll begin doing some science work. We are even further behind in science than we are with history and I’m at something of a loss as to what to do about that. I don’t want to shortchange her chemistry and physics, but until I prove to myself that we’re going to stay on target, I hate to spend even more money on science curriculum. We’ll be working on Latin more or less steadily and as normal.

I like our summer schedule, though. History, Latin, and math drill daily; some practice in spelling; science beginning later in the summer. I know that next week, when we’re all going to day camp, will prove challenging - finding the energy in myself for schoolwork after a long day will be difficult at best - but I think we can do it.